Best of 2014: A Year in Reading and Reviewing

It boggles my mind that 2014 is almost at a close, but there you have it. 2014 has been a transitional reading year for me, since it was my first year blogging and subsequently I’ve found some books that I never would’ve heard of otherwise. Generally I have a good sixth sense for what kinds of books will work well for me – but every now and then something will really surprise me and I’ll find a new fave. Thanks to my blogging buds I’ve read more books out of my comfort zone than ever before!

Reading Stats

What would I do without Goodreads? Honestly I couldn’t tell you, since I’ve been using it for 6 years. It really is such a good way to keep track of my stats. Look how many four star books I read this year! I feel pretty smug about that. You’ll notice there’s only one book that hasn’t been rated – it is The Walled City by Ryan Graudin and it’s unrated because I DNFed it. It was my first DNF ever…sigh. Guess that makes me a real blogger now.

I beat my Goodreads challenge of 75 books by 21 (I expect to finish my current read before the new year), but that’s not too surprising since 75 was a pretty conservative number. I’m not quite sure why I chose such a low number, but I’m guessing I thought that school would keep me too busy to read much for personal enjoyment. All I have to say to that is HA! As if I would ever let school outstrip personal reading time. Thankfully I read a fair amount and found some real gems.

Let’s jump into the favourites! You can click on the cover image of each title to see my review for it, with the exception of my “Best Literature” picks which will link to their Goodreads pages.

Best in Urban Fantasy

My favourite genre! I’ve read some really great UF this year, including a few new-to-me authors and a couple auto-buy authors. Visions was my favourite book this year (love you, Kelley Armstrong!), but there was a title in another category that came pretty close to unseating it.

Best in Fantasy

Honestly I didn’t read that much fantasy this year, but most of what I did read was awesome. These four are definitely the standouts, with Dreamer’s Pool coming in at a close second on my “best of 2014” list. Almost beating out Kelley Armstrong is a big deal!

Best in Science Fiction

Now anyone who reads the blog regularly knows that I’m not exactly a seasoned sci-fi reader, but I tried to read more widely this year and that resulted in some pretty awesome finds.

Best in Graphic Novels

It may surprise some of you to hear that before 2014 I had read very few graphic novels; after a quick check on Goodreads, it looks like I only read one graphic novel in all of 2013! But now I absolutely love them, and I’ve been fortunate enough to read some really outstanding graphic novels with amazing artwork to boot!

Kind of weird looking at this list and seeing only two YA novels…I wonder what that says about how my reading habits have changed. Honestly I blame it on the six-month UF binge I’ve been on! Some reading goals for next year: finishing all the trilogies I’ve started, reading more books by authors of colour, and reading more sci-fi.

Here’s hoping that 2015 turns out to be an even better reading year than 2014!